The present chapter brings doctoral writing and imposter syndrome (or imposter feelings) in conversation with each other. Doctoral writing is not
only a component of doctoral education; it plays a crucial role in ‘doctoral becoming.’ In Canada, where I am based, doctoral students are required to submit and defend a dissertation or thesis to graduate. Although doctoral writing is receiving an increasing amount of attention, I know of very few studies that consider doctoral writing and imposter syndrome together. This is important because both doctoral writing and imposter syndrome have implications for the types1 of experiences that Emmioglu et al. (2017) suggest influence doctoral students’ decisions to persist in their programmes. The data for this chapter is derived from three separate studies: (1) a case study of one Indigenous doctoral candidate and their experiences with writing, (2) a mixed-methods study of doctoral students’ experiences with writing during their PhD, and (3) a qualitative explorative study of graduate students’ experiences with imposter syndrome.

1. canada
2. doctoral writing
3. failure
4. imposter syndrome
5. rhetorical genre studies
6. writing and rhetoric

Original publication source: The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86570-2_16)

Citation: Amell, Brittany. (2022). Getting Stuck, Writing Badly, and Other Curious Impressions: Doctoral Writing and Imposter Feelings. In Michelle Addison, Maddie Breeze, & Yvette Taylor (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education (pp. 259–276). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86570-2_16